Electronic records may let depression therapy slip

Some patients are half as likely to receive depression treatment in primary care practices that use electronic medical records as they are in practices that use paper-based records, new research shows.

“There is some evidence that typing these notes into the computer is actually reducing the amount of time that physicians and patients talk to each other during visits,” says University of Florida researcher Jeffrey Harman.

“If the physician only has time to address two out of three conditions, depression may be the one that they’re not talking about.”